Advantages
Music of Kebyar
Commoners
Temporal Perspectives
Village Fields
Knowledge
Magnificent
Betutu
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Mahendradatta
Music of Kebyar
Administrative

Social and cultural dynamics

descent. Ruling lines practiced primogenitural succession to office. Rajas themselves were in principle succeeded by first-born sons of their same-status wife (Padmi). But a first-born son of a lower wife (penawing) might challenge the claims of a later born son by a same-status wife for other privileges. In everything from succession to inheritance to leadership in political and religious affairs, principles of insider/ outsider mother plus birth order of offspring make any lineal descent principle misleading. Indigenous religions views of marriage say it must strengthen descent (turunan), so to fulfill the duty (dharma) to the enshrined ancestors who are in a line with the gods. As we shall see, the way to gain this strength of descent is by 'family marriage.'

In summary, Balinese marriage types (Figure 1) form a ranked triad. The difference between Type-C and Type-A marriage is a contrast in the status of offspring, whether implicit or explicit, and it is always explicit where high-caste patterns prevail. Type-C marriage is superior to Type-A. Optimally, Type-B marriage reaps the advantages of both - same status plus individual preference - while achieving a useful perpetuated alliance. Thus, judging from these values on different marriage types, marriage in Bali is not preeminently, as alliance theory would insist, a means of achieving a regularized connection between a closed set of social groups, as in matrilateral-cross-cousin marriage systems, or a means of articulating positive rules to define and rank a closed set of social categories, such as wife-givers superior or inferior to wife-takers. Nor at the opposite extreme can marriage be understood to result from 'the whims of two persons acting as private individuals' (Leach 1961: 56). Balinese marriage expresses status at each level of society by opposing relative endogamy to exogamy. When joined with values of romantic love, this in/out marriage system produces individual capture. When joined with values on hypergamy, it produces the general caste scheme that divides Bali into Brahmana, Satria, Wesia, and Sudra. But at the level of interaction within and between ancestor-groups of all castes, the hypergamous provisions are subject to many exceptions, and the crux of marriage concerns falls back on the status implications not of giving versus receiving daughters, but of keeping versus losing them. Neither a personal whim nor a social expression of on-going exchange, marriage here achieves hierarchy.

Secondary negative restrictions

Many Balinese texts list varieties of incest and near incest (garnia). For example, real sibling-sibling marriage and real sibling-parent marriages are taboo. Marriage between the senior-fernale generation and the junior-female generation is prohibited, as is marriage between higher caste females and lower caste males; marriage between the senior-male generation and the junior-female generation is possible but discouraged. Client-guru marriage is also characterized as incestuous." If we consider incestuous unions and intergenerational endogamous ones, especially aunt-nephew, as a core of prohibitions that underlies the three positive marriage types, there remain secondary